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The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) is an organization made up of more than 460 companies and close to 7,000 individuals whose common goal is to advance the adoption of storage networks as complete and trusted solutions.

The SNIA includes numerous Technical Work Groups, including the "I/O Traces, Tools, and Analysis (IOTTA)" Technical Work Group that has been a driving force behind the IOTTA Repository.  The "IOTTA Repository" is a SNIA-maintained web site, located within the SNIA Technology Center, that is used to store, manage and distribute the contents of a repository for storage-related I/O traces, I/O trace collection and analysis tools, and other related information.         

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Back at the end of August 1999, the rival Next Generation I/O and Future I/O (FIO) camps came together to announce that they would combine their efforts to develop a new proposed, open I/O standard which promotes a point-to-point, switched fabric interconnect (initially called System I/O).  Subsequently the InfiniBand^sm Trade Association was announced.  This new organization (which replaced the System I/O moniker) was lead by seven steering companies: Compaq, Dell, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems.  Other sponsoring companies included 3Com, Adaptec, Agilent Technologies, Banderacom, Brocade Communication Systems, EMC Corp., Fujitsu-Siemens, Hitachi, JNI Corp., Lane15 Software, Mellanox Technologies, NEC, Network Appliance, and Redswitch Inc.

The Direct Access File System (DAFS) is a shared-file access protocol designed to take advantage of System Area Networks using the Virtual Interface (VI) architecture.  The VI architecture provides a new, transport-independent, memory-to-memory networking paradigm meant for high-throughput, low-latency clustered environments.  DAFS is intended primarily for clustered, shared-file network environments, where a limited number of server-class clients connect to a set of file servers via a dedicated high-speed network.

The DAFS Collaborative was an industry special-interest group established to develop the DAFS Protocol Specification.  The DAFS protocol specification v1.0 was completed in September 2001, and submitted to the IETF as an Internet Draft.  The DAFS API specification v1.0 was completed in November 2001, and so completed the mission of the DAFS Collaborative.

DAFS-related industry initiatives were continued in the DAT Collaborative and the DAFS Implementers Forum within the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA).

The Intelligent I/O (I2O) Architecture Specification defined a "split driver" model for creating device drivers that are portable across multiple Operating Systems and host platforms.  This specification was maintained by the I2O Special Interest Group (I2OSIG) whose members included HP, Intel, Microsoft, Novell, Adaptec, LSI Logic and Wind River Systems among many others.  The I2OSIG ceased operations on 13 October 2000, but the I2O web site (formerly the URL noted above) had provided some materials (specifications, publications and other resources) about I2O.  One of the final issues faced by the I2O initiative was its role (if any) within the emerging InfiniBand initiative (see above).